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What Obama said vs. what Obama meant

Obama has put out some top-line plans to cut the deficit, but he hasn’t laid out the kind of detail in budget plan’s like Ryan’s. Obama tried to draw top Congressional leaders into negotiations on that, but he has resisted public outlining how and where he’d be willing to limit entitlement programs enough to tackle the deficit.

Also, note the qualifications on his pledges on the home mortgage interest deduction and child tax credits. It may sound like he’s ruling out changes to those policies, but he’s actually leaving room to put those things on the table if higher taxes for the rich are part of the deal.

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Jobs and the economy

What he said: "After a decade of decline, this country created over half a million manufacturing jobs in the last two and a half years. And now you have a choice: we can give more tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, or we can start rewarding companies that open new plants and train new workers and create new jobs here, in the United States of America. We can help big factories and small businesses double their exports, and if we choose this path, we can create a million new manufacturing jobs in the next four years…..Now you have a choice — between a strategy that reverses this progress, or one that builds on it."

What he meant: I don’t want to celebrate where we are because a lot of Americans are hurting, but we’ve been making progress creating jobs. Don’t trust Romney on this front because he’s a Wall Street type who thinks jobs should go wherever labor is the cheapest, like overseas.

The problem for Obama is that while jobs were coming back at a steady clip for the last couple of years, the pace of their return has slowed recently. And amid increasing fears that gridlock over the budget could cause tax rates to increase and government spending to be cut back dramatically, some private employers are getting jittery about hiring and expansion. Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke said recently that the Fed will probably have to move to stimulate the economy if the jobs numbers continue to look weak. Not a great picture for an incumbent.

Incumbency

What he said: “My opponent and his running mate are new to foreign policy, but from all that we’ve seen and heard, they want to take us back to an era of blustering and blundering that cost America so dearly.

“After all, you don’t call Russia our number one enemy – and not al Qaeda – unless you’re still stuck in a Cold War time warp. You might not be ready for diplomacy with Beijing if you can’t visit the Olympics without insulting our closest ally…. I’m no longer just a candidate. I’m the President.”

Readers' Comments (27)

Why would anyone in their right mind ever WANT four more years of the misery, grief, failure, disaster and division that this guy has brought to the country?

Whatever you think of him personally, he has been a failure as a president. He made a lot of promises in 2008, very few of which were kept.

Now he's back in 2012 with the same socialist agenda, making the same promises. Why would anyone, even a radical left-wing partisan, believe that doing the same thing for anoher four years will bring a different result?

The old adage about the definition of insanity as "doing the the same thing over and over and expecting a different result" certainly applies here. Personally, I think the entire Demcratic party has gone completely insane.

Sad ending to his Presidential term, particularly when you compare it to Denver in 2008. Gone are the lofty goals, the soaring rhetoric. Now he must face the harsh reality that very few of his promises were kept. Unemployment did not stay below 8% even with his $800 billion deficit gamble on Stimulus. He did not close GITMO or try terrorists in New York, not that I supported either of those dumb ideas. He bungled the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, leaving that country exposed to Iranian influence. And he bungled the surge in Afghanistan by declaring a withdrawal date, conveniently timed to his reelection so as not to offend the anti-miliary core of the Democrat Party. He did not address immigration reform, tax reform, or entitlement reform in his first two years when he had an overwhelming Democrat majority in Congress. Instead he wasted his political capital on Obamacare, which the majority of American rejected before, during and after its passage. He failed to cut deficits in half by the end of this first term - instead setting a record for deficits that no other President has achieved in 4 years, resulting in our credit rating being cut. And rather than unite the country, his policies triggered the rise of the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. The only speech I care to hear him make is his concession speech on November 6th.

Obama is scaring everyone to vote for him in Nov. 2012. Obama is overlooking that he already scared us over the past 4 years. The thought of Obama getting another 4 years is a new nightmare. The voters need to "fire him as President" on Nov 6 and watch him move back to Chicago on Jan 21, 2013.

The electorate is the problem. Faith and patriotism may be the linchpin for the red states, but America is not God's favorite country. Evolution is right and creationism is wrong. Obama is right. Most of all this country needs a much better educated red state electorate.

On Obama's record: he turned a 750,000 job loss a month on Jan 2009 to positive number within a two years and has 4 million private sector jobs created in his term - more than both Bush and Reagan. Turned a -7% GDP loss in Q4 2008 to positive numbers. Stabilized a financial system that for the first time in our history was bailed out. During the great depression it took over ten years to recover with metrices at the outset close to what we had in 2008. The problem is many folks expected Obama to flick his finger and obtain a miracle.

As for Romney, there is just no plausible explanation for a presidential candidate having accounts in Caymans, Bermuda, and Swiss when he was already running for President for the past 7 years. All while we fought two trillion dollar wars his party started and some gave treasure and their kids lives. And on top of that refusing to release PAST taxes. They just think there would be enough people to buy that crap as well as the one proposing 20% more tax cuts to himself even after paying only 13% the past years and with the cuts from 2001 having yielded net negative jobs and deficits compared to the 23million jobs and trending surpluses the 8 years before. Wake up America, replace the obstructionist Congress and we'd again be back on the path of repair as we started between 2009 and 2011 before they came back and stalled all progress.

Our national election process is peaking with conventions and debates as we approach the November 6th vote. With the instantaneous and ubiquitous media, elections have become a tsunami of rancorous propaganda, petty punditry and outright lies. So, let’s sort out just what separates our two political parties today.

Democrats, or “Dramatocrats,” are the compassion party where everyone (especially minorities) is a victim of capitalism in American, and where central government institutions must be funded, erected and deployed to rescue you from your race, job, gender preference, income, citizenship, physical ability, geography, diet and pollution.

Republicans, or “Responsibilicans,” are the justice party where everyone is expected to take free and personal responsibility for their lives and prosperity with limited reliance upon, or expectations of, government involvement in their daily lives.

Dramatocrats are moved by the dramatic elements of rhetorical pathos, imagery, symbolism, music and emotive victim claims. Government is the principal unifier of mankind for Dramatocrats. Taxation of the successful to grow government is their way to get everyone to the same middle class out come. Corporations, profits and markets are only valued as taxable collective assets to be redistributed in pursuit of social and environmental equality.

Responsibilicans are moved by the laws of the U.S.Constitution, global economics and civil justice. Governments are necessary, but should be affordable and accessories to personal achievement and free enterprise. Taxation should be broadly borne, adopted by voters, and used only for the essentials of government programs. Responsibilicans applaud capitalism as the proven path to the greatest growth and prosperity for mankind.

All I know is the stock market is back over 13,000. I'm better off now than four years ago. My 401K looks great. (i lost half of it in 2008). I can retire now.....So all you who have 401k's are better off! You'll need more than 4 years to repair what took 8 years for dull knive Bush to listen to his sharp knive cronies.

LibertarianLeft - Gee, you did some research didn't you? Ryan's budget had Medicare cuts in it. Do you know why? Its the law of the land - Obamacare. He had to use that baseline to project budgets. He could NOT in his capacity of House Budget Chairman repeal Obamacare (although a lot of us wish he could). But - and this is an important but - Romney is the head of the ticket, not Representative Ryan - and Romney's plan makes no cuts to Medicare in the future until people aged 54 and younger start retiring. Hope you can handle this added insight.